Babeuf, Francois Noel

1789 – Wrote the section of the petition from the village of Roye, which requested the king to abolish all feudal rights.

1791 – Appointed commissioner to report on the national property (biens nationaux).

1792 – Elected a member of the council-general of the département of the Somme.

– Accused of fraud for having altered a name in a deed of transfer of national lands.

1793 – Fled to Paris, and on the 23rd of August he was sentenced in contumaciam to twenty years’ imprisonment.

1794 – Babeuf for a new trial before the Aisne tribunal, which acquitted him.

1794 – Began to publish the Journal de la liberté de la presse, later known as Le Tribun du peuple. In an article written shortly after the Thermidorian coup.In Le Tribun du peuple he put forth his socioeconomic ideas and called for the establishment of a republic of equals.

1795 – Arrested again and the Tribun du peuple was solemnly burnt in the Théatre des Bergeres by the jeunesse dorée, young men whose mission it was to root out Jacobinism.

1796 – Babeuf and his fellowmen were plotting an attack upon the government. They wanted to implement the Constitution of 1793, because they believed that it would place governmental power in the hands of the people, their plan was betrayed by the spy Georges Grisel.

– On 10th of May Babeuf and the other leaders of the movement were arrested.

1797 – Babeuf was condemned to death, and he was executed the next day.